


Radio Star

by ballot



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23996986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballot/pseuds/ballot
Summary: It's been twenty years since Butch left the Vault, and he's happy to be finally settling down in the quiet space between Nevada and Arizona. Unfortunately, between a trio of bounty hunters with a list of names published on Lucky 38 letterhead, an eerie escapee from the East, and Charon's penchant for being right all the time, Butch's retirement is getting (very) reluctantly postponed.
Kudos: 2





	1. E01: Easy Living

What exactly used to be here if the Old World maps already called it Dead Mountains?

The question hung itself in the forefront of Declan’s mind, sending the panic of his current situation backward — but he was already on autopilot, diving behind an outcropping for cover, ignoring the stitch in his side and the rent flesh down his arm. What could have been here? Breathing hard, he readied his rifle and peered around the rocks. 

Deathclaws? There was no way they inhabited this place two hundred years ago. Al was already taking aim herself, scratched up and sweaty but a safer length away. Where did Deathclaws come from? The one threatening them was picking itself up with a snarl.

There was Aggie sprinting as fast as her long legs could manage. Even at this distance, he could see her bruised eyes were wild. Declan didn’t know too much about Old World fauna. The Deathclaw starting after her didn’t resemble a bird, or a turtle. He took aim, breathing deep to override the pain in his wounded arm. Aggie leapt to the side just as Al started shooting.

The Deathclaw roared, distracted now, twisting to find the new threat. Was it part dinosaur? Could the scientists even do that? Al started running. Dinosaur. That didn’t sound right.

Declan pulled the trigger. Al hadn’t yet diverged, but she was the weakest runner among them — and that was without the weeping claw marks in her leg. Some strays punched the ground close enough to send dirt up her legs and a scowl in his direction. The Deathclaw had seen him, though, so there was no time to communicate.

He scrambled up and started running. It was fast. What animals were fast like this before the bombs?

He saw Aggie climbing a tree and veered away to give her time. He could feel the ground rumble; didn’t dare glance back. His throat felt raw. He was picturing turtles again. He concentrated on pumping his legs harder. 

A crack split the air. The Deathclaw’s steps stuttered. Al yelled “ _ Take cover! _ ” and Declan changed direction again, throwing himself by a boulder, crawling away as he stayed low. Behind him, Al’s grenade exploded in a cacophony of rock and dirt and Deathclaw.

He could glance back now. The Deathclaw was a writhing mass of limbs, sans one leg. Declan hauled himself up and readied his rifle. A quick inventory of his friends saw Al coming up with caution from one side and Aggie from the other, both ready to fire. He positioned himself to better sight the Deathclaw’s face; its mangled eye.

Declan shot first. 

Once the bloody, leathery mass was truly still, the three of them let their shoulders sag with the weight of their wounds and breathed out hard. Aggie ran a filthy hand through her filthy hair, shoving it back and away from her face, before stalking over to the overlook they’d first sought out and squinting through already swollen eyes. Al scrubbed her own hand over her face, smearing it with grime. She looked first at the gashes in her leg, then frowned at Declan, who hocked out a glob of blood and spit.

“Pretty trigger happy there, bud.”

He gave her a grimace that didn’t have the spirit to be a grin. “Sorry.”

“Guys,” Aggie hissed, backing away from the edge. “I don’t think we’re getting this guy anytime soon.”

Al shared a look with Declan before they both walked over to Aggie, to the cliff.

Below and before them, a valley in the Old World’s Dead Mountains was hosting a colony of Deathclaws, each brandishing their teeth and claws — but not at each other. It seemed the uncountable crowd of them were sniffing, and searching, and slowly making their way out.

Up.

And down in the midst of it all stood a man, still and ignored, staring directly at the trio.

The three only glanced at each other for a moment before they took off running.

  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

##  **RADIO STAR**

* * *

_ E01: Easy Living _

They were some years settled in Nevada now, just south of the 163 and just west of Hiko Springs. Butch, he cut hair for soldiers, civvies, tourists, and the stray defecting roamin’ Roman. The big guy did odd jobs on the odd occasion, but mostly tended to their modest farm. Won that one in a game of Caravan thanks to a whole lot of liquor, a whole lot of luck, and a whole lot of strategically pointed guns and knives. There were some beer and blood stains on the deed, but hey, you didn’t make it this far by not very aggressively collecting on your bets. They were both done with taking shit, and taking orders, and the Nosebleed would have rolled over in that daily-polished memorial to think of it.

(Nosebleed would have loved the West.)

But idyll was never to last in the Wasteland. One day, while Charon was tilling the soil and Butch was mending his old jacket, the ghoul stiffened; there was a figure in the distance, heading toward them from the East. 

Arizona. Legion territory and growing; though the Dam had been taken and Caesar dead, the Legion had spent the last fifteen years replenishing its number and strength — aided in no small part by the disgruntled and disillusioned. The NCR had been supplanted by their prized mercenary as the head of New Vegas, and he wasn’t one to care what flag you flew or banner you marched under, so long as his interests reigned supreme. Butch and Charon, sight-seers, remained carefully neutral, out from under that wretched thumb.

The figure approached, and so as Charon walked past him into the house, Butch tracked the ghoul inside — “You think it’s as bad as all that?”

“It’s Legion,” came as a grunt, and Charon re-emerged with his trusty shotgun.

Butch shrugged and resumed his work, shifting his actual toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Maybe they're looking for a slave.” But his ears were pricked.

The figure was a girl in white, caked in dust and mud, barefoot and empty handed. They did not react as she approached, almost disbelieving. They both shared the strange feeling that she was something unreal, not of this plane; a ghost. Not that they believed in ghosts.

She staggered forward, hair wild and filthy about her face, eyes bright, mouth curled. She gasped, _“please_ _—”_ , and it was a harsh and grating noise, and she collapsed in the half-tilled soil of their modest farm.

* * *

‖

► _If you leave me here... there will be nothing for you to return to._

####  ►

* * *

Butch mocked Charon for looking like a decrepit old nun in a convent, but the ghoul remained silent while he worked on wiping down the girl’s extremities with a wet rag, revealing brown skin bearing nothing more than the general wear and tear that comes from wandering the desert. Her shift was grimy, weathered, but had no stain of blood or other indicator of injury. Her head he’d started with, in hopes of rousing her, but she’d remained unconscious. 

She was breathing deeply. Could she be so lucky to be simply exhausted?

Dishes clinking and cupboards clattering and the tinny, staticky warbling of some long-dead crooner filtered out from the kitchen. Charon wrung out the rag and rose, taking it and his bowl of murky water away. When he entered, Butch didn’t turn from his whisking, wires skrit-scratching against batter and ceramic, yet the cigarette between his lips bobbed; a momentary tension.

Charon dumped the water down the sink and settled the bowl next to it. He started on rinsing out the rag. He was very good at staying silent, better than the kid had been, and certainly better than Butch was, though Butch had admittedly improved with age. Still, whatever he was working on was well whisked by this point, likely with a touch more ash than he’d intended, given the remainder of the cigarette Butch had yet to stop sucking down and tap off into the sink. 

Of the two of them in the kitchen, it was the radio that broke first. Really, it had been at least a little bit broken for maybe a few years before they got to it, but the baleful strains of Peggy Lee slipped suddenly and fully into white noise. Butch grunted, dropping the whisk into the bowl, and leaned over the counter to smack the little box. The static stuttered, then persisted.

“We ain’t no charity,” he said to it. Charon hung the rag on a cupboard knob and started on cleaning out the bowl he’d used. Butch turned to him, annoyed. “How many times we gotta go over this?”

Charon met his eyes. “You tell me.”

Butch spluttered, then glared, plucking the cigarette out of his mouth to jab it around for emphasis. “ _ I _ am  _ trying _ to be  _ retired _ ,” he grit out, “but your bony, thousand-year-old ass keeps taking on these  _ causes _ like your contract’s buried out in D.C. with Charlie’s rotting bones and bleeding heart ghost.”

Charon only stared. Butch heard him anyway and scowled.

“We don’t know what she’s carrying or who’s followin’. Yeah, someone’s on her tail — you know just as well as I do that slavers don’t just send their pretty young things on their merry barefoot way. I ain’t getting mixed up in that. Especially not  _ now _ .”

He flicked the stub of his cigarette into the sink and went back to whisking, shoulders bunched up and head shaking. Charon folded his arms. The radio continued to sputter static. A moment passed before Butch turned back, now using the dripping whisk as punctuation.

“It’s  _ different _ this time, alright? This ain’t some snot-nosed brat running home to mommy and daddy because the big leagues were too scary, or — or some jaded old fuck wantin’ a trim before his new life in California. This is a  _ runaway slave _ and I’ll be damned if I let this place turn into some underground railroad. This is my  _ retirement farm _ .”

“Our farm.” Some gravitas in the gravel of Charon’s voice.

“Oh my God,  _ whatever _ .” Butch plunked the whisk into the bowl and the bowl onto the counter in a huff. “She can’t stay here. I’m kickin’ her out  _ yesterday _ .”

He turned away again, clanking in a cupboard for a frying pan, rummaging around for wherever they threw the lard last. Charon glanced over at the doorway, then back at Butch; shiny little white hairs peeked out from the black at his coiffured temple, faint steps of crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes. Brown skin like the girl’s, scarred up here and there but whole and clean. 

“She’s a kid.”

Butch dripped a tiny dot of batter into the pan and watched for the bubbles in the melted lard; the sizzle faded into the static.

“Yeah, well, slaves like you, kids like me… they don’t always make it.”

Charon’s eyes narrowed, and the radio started blaring  _ let’s go sunning, it’s so good for you _ clear as day. His focus snapped to the doorway again, just before the girl appeared, a spectre in the frame. She opened her mouth, closed it, tried again; her brow furrowed. She clutched at her collarbone.

“There’re clean clothes in the bathroom,” Butch said, pointing. “A shower, too.” He waited until the girl nodded and left before pursing his lips and going back to the stove and static. Charon considered him. The moment passed and Charon took a bottle of sarsaparilla from the fridge to sit with him at the table.

“Bleeding heart,” Charon muttered alongside the hiss of the bottle opening.

“They’re your clothes,” Butch snarked back.

* * *

‖

»  _ There’s nothing in life but you. _

####  ►

* * *

“It was your idea,” Al groused, narrowing her eyes. She was crowded around her bottle at the bar, hunched over in some mixture of fatigue and frustration. Aggie glared right back, leaning in a languid stretch away from the bar, fingers playing along her own beverage. The swelling around her eyes had mostly gone down, but they were ringed with purple and black.

“It wasn’t a bad idea,” Declan said, sitting between them. He had to pause to stop himself from scratching at the bandages on his arm. “But maybe it wasn’t a complete idea.”

“It was the  _ best _ idea,” Aggie declared. She downed the rest of her beer and waited for the bartender to look over so she could motion for another. “Now we have a leg up on everyone else with this list, because we know what we’re up against.”

Al made a noise of disgust. “We only have a leg up ‘cause anyone else who tried must have lost both of theirs.” 

She looked around. The bartender was at the far end, topping off a dark-haired man with glassy eyes; behind them, a couple was sitting at a table, listening intently to a program and quick to fiddle with the radio if it started acting up. It was still kind of early, with the sun having hardly set, and certainly none of the current patrons were paying their cluster any heed, but, still — Al leaned closer toward her companions and lowered her voice.

“How is knowing what we’re up against any help? There’s no way we could take on that many Deathclaws… and who knows what else that guy is capable of?”

“We’re not going after him again,” Aggie explained. “At least, not yet. We’re going to go after one of the others on the list first, maybe more, and then we can use the bounties towards serious firepower. If we want to.”

“We could get cannon fodder, too,” Declan helpfully supplied. The other two scoffed at him. “What? It’s not like I said bait.”

“Maybe a merc or two,” Aggie conceded, “but any more and that’s just us getting less of the pot.”

“What if this guy’s the best guy on the list?” Al looked around again, furtive. “What if everyone else is worse?”

Aggie pulled back, incredulous. “What could be worse?”

“I don’t know — a Cazador master?”

“ _ Hey _ , Billy. Billy!” the man at the other end of the bar groused suddenly, drawing their attention along with the bartender’s. He jabbed a thumb behind him, his body swaying perilously with its momentum. “Your radio’s a piece of shit.”

The bartender glared. “You here for booze or what?”

“Nah, Billy. I’m just sayin’. Mine back home, that one’s a piece of shit too. Y’know how you fix a piece of shit?” He leaned forward for dramatic effect, presumably, but the drama was shot by the way he had to steady himself on the bar before he smashed his face into it. Still, he stared hard at the bartender until Billy waved him on. “You get yourself a  _ ghost _ , Billy.”

Billy sighed heavily. Declan exchanged an amused look with Al. The drunk man started shaking his head and waving his hands through the air.

“Hand to God, Billy. Bill. Little ghost girl wandered onto the farm today — from the  _ East _ — and fixed the piece of shit brand new. Just talked with it or somethin’. All we had to do was feed her.”

“I think you’re done for the night, Butch.”

“Wha —?  _ Billy _ . Don’t do me like that…”

Al gestured over at the lush with her bottle. “You know what? I wanna be  _ that _ drunk right now.”

Declan laughed and went for a swig himself, but paused with the tip of his bottle on his lip when he caught sight of Aggie’s knit brow and set jaw. “What is it?”

“What if he’s telling the truth?”

Al scowled. “What, that if you feed a ghost it will fix your radio?”

“ _ No _ ,” Aggie said. She started bobbing her foot. “Didn’t you hear him? She talked a radio into working?”

“Yeah, I managed to get that through his slurring and total lack of volume control.” Al rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Come on, babe. Wouldn’t you have called someone mind-controlling _ Deathclaws _ ridiculous?” At Al’s silence, Aggie turned to Declan. “Isn’t this just the sort of weird shit that would be on the same list as Stier?”

Declan mulled it over a sip of beer. “You’re not wrong…”

“Then let’s talk to the guy. Should we do the sibling thing?”

Al groaned at that. “That never works. We all look nothing alike.”

“Alright, alright — sad little Declan? The sob stories usually work on the drunks.”

“I’m tired of being sad,” Declan groused. “Why don’t we do the reward shpiel? He looks like a money man.”

“Aw, look at him, Dex. He’s sloppy and worked up. The sympathy play is a sure thing,” Aggie said, slapping him on the back with a grin. “And you’re so good at it.”

Declan’s brows knit and he rubbed his temple. “Alright. Fine.”

Al gave him a thumbs up. “You got this, Dex.”

With somewhat genuine despondency, Declan got to his feet and approached the drunk man, half-settling on the stool next to him. The man — Butch — eyed him through such a squint that Declan wasn’t entirely confident he could see anything at all. “Hey… Heard you talking ‘bout a ghost girl.”

Butch snorted. “So what?”

“I — well, my wife, she went missing a few weeks ago, and that girl you mentioned sounded a lot like —”

“Buzz off,” he snapped, baring his teeth. “I ain’t fallin’ for that shit.”

Declan kept politely silent at that, but he wasn’t in the mood to try and correct course. Ignoring that Aggie and Al were listening intently, he leaned against the bar and switched gears. “Alright, I’ll cut to the chase — your friend fits the profile of a fat bounty I’m tracking, and if you make this easy for me then it’d only be fair to cut you in, yeah?”

“Grow up.” Butch rolled his eyes and turned away — right to where Aggie was waiting, posed against the bar. He startled upon seeing her face, but she smiled sweetly, sidling up to his side.

“Howdy, Mister. Excuse my friend here — he’s had kind of a rough go of things lately. Lost his wife to slavers and, well, when he hears about someone like a wanderer from the East…”

“This ain’t no slaver,” Butch slurred, shaking his head carefully. 

“Didn’t sound like one,” Al agreed, edging out Declan to press herself up against Butch’s other side. “Sounded like a cause, to be honest.”

“Our friend, he cares about causes. And maybe if he can get a win, the guilt might stop eating him alive, y’know?” Aggie hung herself on Butch’s shoulder and flicked her eyes over at Declan; Butch’s followed with some effort.

Declan sighed, and didn’t need to try too hard to look uncomfortable. “I just want to help.”

There was a look on the other man’s face that made him appear suddenly, completely sober — something keen and focused that looked totally foreign on the stranger, but then he looked away before Declan really understood what he’d seen. 

“You ladies really know just what to say to a guy,” Butch mumbled. He wrapped his arms around them. “Billy! How ‘bout another round over here?”

* * *

‖

«  _ Twenty men had tried to take him, twenty men had made a slip... _

####  ►

* * *

The night wasn’t really going how Butch was hoping, which he felt was pretty unfair given how he’d been able to do a Good Thing and solve their Big Problem without even trying much.

Sure, Charon probably didn’t agree with his solution — the ghoul had been steaming mad when Butch got home, three shiny new friends in tow, but, hell, the guy got mad over everything. He went and holed up in the room they’d let the girl crash in — like someone might kidnap her, or something — like that’d be a  _ problem _ — and Butch figured he’d be less cranky in the morning.

The trio from the bar seemed like good folk. It didn’t escape his notice that the man — Declan — had been nursing the one beer while the women got just as smashed as Butch was, so when the ladies regrettably seemed more interested in each other than they were in Butch, he sat the younger man at the kitchen table with two mostly clean glasses and one half-full bottle of whiskey, poured them each a finger, and held his drink aloft.

Declan clinked his glass and they took their shots together. Sneaky folk would have tried to get out of it. Pleased with his excellent judgement, Butch poured them both another serving.

“Hey, old man!” Aggie called from the living room, where they’d left her cuddling with You-Can-Call-Me-Al. “Let Charon out!”

Al said something they couldn’t quite make out, and Declan smiled to himself as they dissolved into giggles, shaking his head.

“I don’t lock him up or anything,” Butch grumbled. “Ain’t they ever seen a ghoul before?”

“There was an old one back in our hometown,” Declan said. “A repairman. Aggie had a huge crush on him growing up because, rumour had it, he secretly used to be a wicked gunslinger.”

Butch peered at him incredulously. “She’s got a weird type.”

“Yup.” Declan drained his glass at Butch’s behest, then sat back and looked around. “That your piece of shit radio?”

Butch hummed, replenishing the other man’s drink. “The one and only.”

“And the mysterious radio whisperer is sleeping.”

“You wanna take a peek with the ol’ guard dog sittin’ vigil? Be my guest. Your funeral.” Declan gave him a lopsided little smile at that, and Butch eyed him with a frown. “Hey. Why’re your ladies all banged up?”

The younger man instantly made a face. “There’s a lot wrong with that. But they just weren’t fast enough.”

As he sniggered to himself, clearly feeling the warmth of the liquor, Butch himself felt frozen. Was Charon right, and this wasn’t the solution it had seemed? He cleared his throat, his brows a hard line. “Y’know, my ma, she used to get involved with some real lowlifes… Used to.” He paused. “You a lowlife, kid?”

Declan shook his head. “Not making fun of them. Could’ve easily been me. Deathclaws are  _ quick _ .” Butch stared, a little stunned at the misunderstanding and turn of conversation. Declan obliviously splashed more liquor into each of their glasses, frowned, then looked back up at Butch. “Do you know what they used to be?”

“What’re you people doing,” Butch asked, words flopping out like batter off a spoon, “hanging around Deathclaws?”

“We’re — we help people,” Declan said, brows furrowed, but Butch was already beyond convincing. The only people who needed  _ help _ involving Deathclaws in these parts were folks seeking out powdered claw or strips of demon jerky to help them keep their dicks hard. Coupled with Declan’s clumsy proposition in the bar and the way they’d ganged up on him after, Butch was completely regretting the miserable truth rearing its ugly mug: Charon and his uglier mug were  _ right _ .

“You don’t help anyone but yourselves,” Butch sneered, slamming his hands on the table as he stood up, seething at how he’d been suckered by the ghost of someone very dear and very dead —  _ I just want to help _ — in a self-serving stranger. “And there ain’t no way I’m letting that little slave girl walk outta here with a bunch of shady bounty hunting  _ fucks  _ so they can cash in on handing her back to her  _ master _ .”

Declan eyed him warily but remained seated, and held his hand carefully out over the table. “Whoa, wait a sec, we’re not —”

“I don’t wanna hear it.” Butch snatched his glass up and tossed back the remainder. As he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he used his other one to jab a finger at Declan.. “You and yours can sleep it off — I hear the ladies snoring already — but in the morning, you’re gone.”

He plunked the glass back onto the table and walked off, steadfastly ignoring anything Declan tried saying in response. He was going to hit the sack and snooze away the unsettling feeling of being  _ wrong _ . With any luck, by the time he woke up, the strangers would have made themselves scarce, and he’d never have to admit any of it to Charon.

* * *

‖

►  _ It’s easy to live, when you’re in love… _

####  ►

* * *

Declan wasn’t sure how things had gone sour so quickly, but the alcohol was hitting and he could feel how much longer it was taking him to process things. Something about leaving Aggie and Al to the Deathclaws didn’t rub Butch the right way? No, something clued him into their bounty hunting…

He rubbed at his temple. He never liked the feel of a fumble, and the buzz was compounding that — his thoughts were melting into each other, his neck felt the strain of the weight of his skull, and his bladder was becoming alarmingly adamant for his attention. 

One problem at a time, he supposed.

He got up and walked into the living room, where Aggie and Al were indeed snoring in turn, a tangle of limbs. Declan tossed something soft and warm over them — it might have been a rug — before making his way outside to find somewhere to piss.

There was a song on the wind, faint, and familiar enough that it rode along with the sheer bliss of finally relieving himself, and he thought to follow the sound after he’d done his pants back up. It brought him to a window on the side of the house, slightly open; probably the girl or the ghoul, or even Butch, listening to the radio. The reception was pretty shit, but through the crackling of the airwaves, he could clearly hear the melody — a sweet, slow tune his dad liked to turn up whenever he caught it playing. 

Declan sat on the ground, settling against the wall under the window, and listened, catching scraps of memory caught on the notes: the warmth of the sun, his dad’s booming voice singing along; Bea, before; Aggie yelling and Al laughing…

As he dozed off, Charon was sitting with his back to him on the other side of the wall, wide awake and staring at the girl on the bed. She was singing — in her sleep — with a voice that seemed to struggle with itself, clipping in and out and full of static, like it was coming from a radio.

####  ■


	2. E02: Come Go With Me

Declan startled awake, immediately locking eyes with a gecko a few paces away. It stared back as he gingerly lifted his head. When he groaned at the extraordinary stiffness in his neck, the gecko puffed out its crown of fins and hissed at him before scampering off.

Cold and uncomfortably sober, Declan slowly pulled himself off the ground. Sunlight was spilling out over the horizon in bright rays, chasing the midnight blue from the sky with streaks of magenta. He didn’t think he’d slept long, nor deeply, but the way his body ached made him feel like he’d been out here and unconscious for days. He turned and peered into the window he’d slept under, more out of habit than anything. From what he could see, the room was empty.

Positive that there was no way Aggie was awake yet and thus not worrying that he’d been abandoned here, Declan made his way back into the house. Lo and behold, Aggie was still on the floor, cozy and content in slumber under the rug. At her side, Al caught his eye, put her finger to her lips, then pointed it to the kitchen doorway.

“ _You know — you_ know _this is more than a little escort trip over to the nearest friendly outpost. We’re supposed to be done. What’s the matter with you?_ ”

That was definitely Butch. Another voice, its harshness highlighted by the way the speaker kept to a hush, surely came from his ghoul companion: “ _So you wanna send these people —?”_

“ _These people_ ,” Butch interrupted, noticeably louder than he’d started out, “ _are already lookin’ for trouble_.”

His tone was remarkably pointed considering that Declan was generally very quiet when he moved around, but he figured that Butch and Charon both were well-acquainted with the sounds of their home, and of the front door in particular. Catching Al’s eye in passing, Declan made his way into the kitchen. Butch was sitting at the table, heavy in the chair and hunched over his own lap, a cigarette jutting out between his lips. Charon was standing across from him, spine straight and shoulders back. The look he gave Declan was impassive, but there was threat beyond the patchwork layers of the ghoul’s face.

“See? What’d I tell ya?” Butch said impatiently to Charon, before addressing Declan. “Didn’t I tell you to beat it?”

Declan rolled his neck, partly in a show of unaffected bravado, and partly because it was still killing him. “You aren’t surprised, are you? Sounds like you have us pegged.”

“You’re damn right I do,” Butch said, baring noticeably straight teeth. “You’re the folk taking the girl off our hands.”

“I thought we were a bunch of shady bounty hunters.”

Butch shrugged, leaning back into his chair. “Jury’s still out. But I had a change of heart.”

“I haven’t,” Charon growled. He turned to face Declan fully, and with just one shift of weight, was towering over him. Declan knew ghouls weren’t the monsters they looked like, but this one really knew how to channel the ferals. “Wake your friends up and scram.”

“Easy, boy,” Butch said, idly drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Charon rounded on him.

“Don’t you start —”

“He’s doin’ us a favor!”

“We ain’t the ones who need a favor.” Charon looked back over at Declan, radiating disdain. “‘Specially not from any slaver thugs.”

Declan scowled. “We’re not —”

“Slaver-adjacent,” Butch supplied.

“We’re not _slavers_ ,” Declan snapped. Charon leaned a scant distance closer, and Declan concentrated on not flinching away.

“Then how’d ya get here so fast, huh? How’d ya know to find her here?”

“The whole bar heard this guy going off,” Declan said, waving a hand at Butch, who paused in scratching at his chin, “and it sounded like the girl was who we’ve been looking for. And...”

Charon whipped his glare back to Butch before Declan finished talking. “See? They were lookin’ for her. We can’t send her off —”

“It’s not what you think,” Declan said quickly. He had to get them thinking that he, Al, and Aggie weren’t just trying to make a quick buck. A _cause_ — that’s what got Butch’s attention in the bar. “There’s — we have this list. And we think she’s on it.”

“How’s that any better?” Charon spat.

“We…” Declan sighed heavily, letting off some true frustration, buying himself a moment. He thought about their plays; the sob story for drunks. “The truth is… our friend’s on the list, too. We’re hoping she can help us get him back.”

“What’re you talking about?” Butch eyed him warily, but the set of his jaw and the stillness of his hands had Declan thinking he was on the right track. 

Declan unzipped his bomber’s sleeve pocket — didn’t miss how the other men tracked the movement — and pulled out the folded square he’d been in charge of since he first lifted it off of some loudmouth jagoff back in New Reno, when summer was just starting to get hot. Opening it, he watched as Butch and Charon took in the letterhead — _Lucky 38_ emblazoned next to a roulette wheel, a row of red diamonds, and a field of iconic green — and the recognition in their faces was quickly supplanted by a grim understanding.

“This started floating around a few months ago,” Declan explained, making a point to keep his eyes on them. “Then our friend — Eitan — went missing. The man up top hasn’t said anything, so we figured our best bet for answers would be someone else on the list. If they don’t know where he is, they’d definitely get us in to see Deth.”

Charon’s expression remained steadfastly unwelcoming. “What makes you think she’s on this list?”

Declan looked away; it was easy to use his stalling as a show of discomfort. “Eitan was — uh, special. He could do things… with his mind. And the way Butch was talking about this girl… like a ghost, talking to radios…”

“She ain’t on it,” Butch cut in. Declan looked at him, surprised, and Butch pointed at the page he held aloft. “This list. She ain’t on it.”

* * *

‖

« _You really need to shut up about her._

#### ►

* * *

Another shower sounded like overkill, but the runaway wasn’t going to turn down the luxury, and especially was not going to argue with the giant that all but ordered her to take one. Charon, as Butch had introduced him, was taller and scarier than most ghouls she could remember seeing, and was very much unlike those others in that he wasn’t hocking wares, cutting hair, dealing with scrap metal, or tending to livestock. Charon was the opposite; not quite a people person, and in fact seemed always to be a scant moment away from soundly dispatching the next person to cough too loud, or walk too close.

Despite that, he’d been nothing but kind to her — they both had — and she would be sorry to have taken that for granted when the kindnesses inevitably ran out.

Drying herself off with a towel that was so threadbare it may have been original to the house, she resolved to repay them the only way she could: by leaving. She was scarcely a few days out from Kingman, and it wouldn’t do to draw any attention to this quiet little homestead at the crossroads. Better to move on now that she’d had some proper rest, and trouble her benefactors no longer.

She pulled on her shift — clean and dry now, thankfully — and looked down at herself, all the way to her bare toes against the tile. The room was quiet still, so much so that stray clinging droplets of water fell with clear and decisive splats, but soon enough the buzzing would begin again.

It was there in the back of her skull when she walked into the living room and nearly stumbled on a pair of women under the rug. One was thin, but her mouth was wide and ajar; curious bolts of red were littered among the dark hair haloing her head. The other woman was stockier in the face and body, with hair similarly but plainly dark, and looked at her with large eyes and a guilty smile. Before the runaway could wonder about that, she caught on to a voice from the kitchen.

“... _our friend — Eitan — went missing._ ” It didn’t sound like Butch, or Charon, whose voice was distinctive even if less often heard, and ended up responding soon after.

“ _What makes you think she’s on the list?_ ”

“ _Eitan was — um, special. And the way Butch was talking about this girl…_ ” She caught her breath. “ _Like a ghost, talking to radios…_ ”

“ _She ain’t on it_.” That was Butch, lying through his teeth, because she hadn’t told either of them her name; wasn’t sure of it herself. All she had was what they’d called her in the pens, that the old lady started using when she hadn’t found her words yet, which meant all she could do was listen; the name that Regor had seen as auspicious and had him decide to purchase her. 

The buzzing spiked in intensity.

She needed to see that list.

Butch was pleading exaggeration — “ _I say all sorts of shit when I’m drunk” —_ when she walked into the kitchen, and any reply the stranger was making dropped off as he turned to look at her. She didn’t really register his face; instead, her eyes went straight to the paper in his hand and the buzzing was a racket in her head, making her heart race. Choking out some jumble of sounds, she grabbed the page without thinking, and scanned it greedily.

_Lucky 38_

_Holly Alvarez_

_Maricris Calle_

_Ambra Menezes_

_Eitan Valence_

_Jasper Klinai_

_Darlene Patisar_

_Eugene Stier_

Something somewhere _snapped_ and the whir of noise depleted into a ringing in her ears. Her eyes unfocused, and the worn paper doubled in her vision, the text floating on itself.

_Take her for a spin!_

The stranger ducked his head down a little to look at her. His voice came from far away. “Hey. What’s your name?”

She blinked, and the page was one again, though a single name lingered above itself in an afterimage. It felt important to meet his eyes when she answered. 

“Oyente.”

Behind him, she could see Butch slump back in his chair.

“See? What’d I tell ya. Nothing to deliver here,” he drawled, taking a fresh drag off his cigarette. “But, hey, she can help carry shit.”

Charon objected, but the stranger was watching her still.

“Did you recognize someone on that list?”

Her lips were dry. She looked back at the list, clutched between both hands, and nodded slowly. “Maricris…” And, suddenly, because the need to know shot through her: “Do you know her? Do you know where she is?”

The stranger looked taken aback at that. “I — no. I don’t. We were actually hoping you could help us find… someone else there.”

Her eyes pricked with tears and she pressed her lips together, inexplicably overcome, but bobbed her head earnestly. She would do anything to stay with this worn sheet of paper. She fought to keep her voice steady when she spoke. “Where did you get this?”

“It came from the Lucky 38 — in the Strip.” He paused, considering her. “That’s the main base of operations of the head of New Vegas, Garrett Deth.”

None of that made any sense to her, which opened up a pit in her stomach, because she was sure that she had life here, outside of Legion territory. She tried to picture the Strip, which must have had slot machines and card tables and hustle and bustle, but her brain rewarded her with only the return of that insistent buzz, a white noise nobody else could hear. 

“I want to go there,” she said, resolute. “I want to talk to him.” 

The stranger smiled at that. “We can take you there.”

At the table, Butch sat his chin in his hand, facing away. A tendril of smoke curled up from his fingers. “Was nice knowing you, kid.”

Then Charon said, “I’m coming with you,” and Butch dropped his cigarette.

* * *

‖

» _Face to face at last._

#### ►

* * *

Aggie’s ability to sleep through pretty much anything afforded them with a tidy excuse to convene together, in private, without looking too suspicious, as it took both he and Al to drag her into the bathroom. The running faucet provided some extra background noise to mask their conversation.

And, sure, Aggie’s unholy screeching as the cold water made contact added authenticity to the ruse, but for Declan, it was mostly entertainment.

“You fucking — _fuckers_ — !”

They let her rant away behind the shower curtain, her elbows and knees knocking into the tub as she scrambled for the tap.

“Got those mercs after all,” Declan said. Al hummed.

“I guess. But these guys sound like they’ll be more trouble than actual mercs.”

“Yeah, but they come for free. And they know their stuff.”

“Yeah? Even the Butch Man?” Al grinned. Declan laughed.

“Even him. Even hungover. You can tell they’ve seen some shit.”

The rush of water shifted to a spray as Aggie managed to turn the shower on, grumbling to herself. Al tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, brows furrowed.

“So what do we do when they catch on?”

Declan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. That girl was definitely on the list, and she’s practically delivering herself. We can get info off of her, get paid at the Lucky, and leave them to it.”

Al was quiet at that. Aggie had moved on to singing to herself. Declan rubbed at his jaw; he hadn’t shaved since before they’d headed out for the Dead Mountains.

"She didn't seem much younger than us," Al finally said. Declan snorted.

"Yeah. The way Butch talked about her, I was almost expecting a toddler."

“He said she could be a robot, or an experiment, or something. Before you came in.” Al bit at her thumbnail. “But when I saw her, she looked… like one of us. Totally normal.”

“She’s not,” Declan said, sure of it. 

Al sighed. “Usually they look a little more mean, y’know?”

“Usually they’re not this high profile,” Declan reminded her. He carded a hand through his hair, grimaced, and looked forward to his turn in the shower. He hoped there’d be hot water left to soothe his neck. “She even had good teeth. You know that says something. To me it means this’ll be the kind of payout some people retire on.”

“I don’t wanna hear a runt like you talk about retiring,” Al snapped, but she was grinning again. He smiled absently. Even Butch didn’t seem old enough to be making the fuss he was over being out of the game, and he had to have at least 20 years on them, easy.

“I said _some_ people. But it would be nice to settle down.”

And Al looked at him like she knew he was thinking about Bea, which he truly hadn’t been until that moment, and really it wasn’t about her at all — it was just that he felt tired sometimes, chasing the next head. He missed getting to take a bath whenever he wanted, and not being bandaged up on some limb or another, and having meals with more seasoning than the metal that leached off of tin cans over the campfire.

But Aggie loved the adventure, and Al loved Aggie, and Declan… Declan wasn’t sure he could be good at anything else.

“We can take a vacation after this,” Aggie said, her wiry arm reaching out from behind the curtain. Al passed a towel to her obligingly, and Aggie shook it for punctuation. “ _If_ you don’t shoot Al again.”

Declan heaved a theatrical sigh. “No promises.”

* * *

‖

« _They’re in here with me…_

#### ►

* * *

Charon did not say anything about the fact that Butch already had a travel pack ready to go, which suited Butch just fine, because now that they were done waffling over the will-they-won’t-they of what to do about the runaway slave girl, they were able to skip straight to sitting her down and getting to the bottom of things. She was perched on the edge of Charon’s bed, looking miles more human than she had when she’d first stumbled onto the farm — black hair clean and tied back, face freshly scrubbed, and her shift dress was worn but bright, having been laundered of its dust and grime and hung to dry in the sun.

“Are you a runaway slave?” Butch asked archly, making sure to enunciate, intensely channeling the very pretty and very professional border patrol woman they’d met around Fort Wayne all those years ago. 

Oyente nodded once. 

Butch nodded back, then looked over to Charon. “I ain’t got any more questions.”

The uninitiated may have thought Charon did not react to this, but his annoyance was very clear (and amusing) to Butch. The ghoul stared down at the girl, opened his mouth to say something, and Butch, struck with another thought, interrupted.

“Alright, alright, hold on.” Butch plucked the toothpick from his mouth. “Is there anything — _anything_ — you wanna tell us, that you don’t want Dex and them to know?”

Oyente didn’t move, hands clasped placidly in her lap, but her lips thinned. She glanced at Charon, then seemed to straighten up. “That list.”

They were silent at that, waiting; something that Butch had long since learned the value of. It wasn’t his style, but Charon and Charlie both had been masters of patience — one out of a general lack of desire to be interacting with others, and the other for the exact opposite. It invariably led to the other person in the conversation spilling their guts out, either to fill the void or cross it. Butch was intimately familiar with the phenomenon, having been subject to it countless times during their travels.

But when Oyente spoke again, all she said was: “I don’t think they’re being honest.”

“You sure you wanna go with ‘em, then?” Charon asked.

“I can’t stay here —”

“Got that right,” Butch snorted.

“— and I think… I think I can get some answers there. At the Strip.” She looked distant, clenching her hands into fists. “There was a casino. I’m sure of it.”

The confused determination was so very Charlie that Butch felt it physically in his throat constricting. Charlie the first time, when the two of them couldn’t have been older than this girl, coming back from the swamp cult’s church with a shaved head and a series of sloppy stitches. 

“Someone,” he rasped, “really did a number on you.”

“That why you left?” Charon said lowly. Oyente shook her head.

“I left because — I couldn’t stay there. But this,” she waved a hand at her temple, “was from before.”

Butch cleared his throat of ghosts. “That what that list’s about?” When Oyente frowned at that, looking like she was about to cry, Butch shook his head emphatically, and wagged a damning finger at her. “Nuh-uh. Don’t you start. Can’t keep secrets if you’re gonna take things so personal.”

She nodded her head, blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay. “That list…”

“It’s important to you. We know that, they know that. Why’s it so important?” Butch shrugged. “Tell us whatever you want. Tell _them_ whatever you want.”

“They — their friend is dead,” she said, her voice so faint it trembled. “Eitan. He’s dead. He’s always been dead.”

Butch looked at Charon then, who was simultaneously unmoved and more grim than a walking zombie had any right to be. Charon looked back, folding his arms in a motion that just reeked of smugness, even if he looked stoic otherwise. Butch rolled his eyes.

“ _Obviously_ he just picked a random name off that list to spin that sob story. They tried the same thing at the bar, talking about his wife —”

“Yeah, did they?” Charon grunted.

“Yeah. They did,” Butch seethed back. “You wanna stop jerkin’ yourself off for a minute? Clearly she knew the guy.”

“I didn’t,” Oyente said, shaking her head, but she didn’t even look convinced by her own words. “I don’t?” She hung her head with a ragged sigh. “I’m sorry… My mind… It’s all a mess.”

“Well, that’s why we’re tagging along,” Butch said. “You’re on your own as soon as you work that shit out.”

She looked so stricken by that he almost felt bad, but he was a seasoned old veteran of the wastes and retired gang leader, not a softie like his stalwart, shambling ghoul companion, who seemed to take pity on the girl at every turn. Probably something former slaves could smell on each other.

“Takes a long time to work that kinda shit out,” Charon rumbled, the sage of brain rewiring. Butch didn’t know the details of the program he’d been produced by — never cared to ask — but Butch had a front row seat to the contract-bound, vintager-than-vintage Charon back in the seventies. It had taken many years of jury-rigged pseudo-therapy sessions and Charlie’s can-do attitude to get Charon to where he was today, which was still far less chill than Butch would have liked.

Oyente didn’t look very reassured by what was admittedly not a very reassuring statement, but she was holding herself with determination again, her jaw set and chin up. “You don’t have to —”

“We’re _gonna_ ,” Butch said firmly. He wasn’t cheerfully ignoring his own desire to wash his hands of all this just so she could question their help.

“But —”

“But nothin’.”

Oyente hesitated, her eyes flickering over to the door for a moment. “Then... _is_ it a good idea to travel with them?”

Butch snorted. “You can bet your ass they have more intel on that list, and on Deth.”

“Cannon fodder,” Charon grunted.

“Yeah, that too,” Butch agreed. “So don’t be shy, but don’t be stupid either. Got it?” She didn’t look like she did but she nodded very confidently, so he let it slide. “Good. Now let’s lay down some ground rules so we can ditch this dumb backwater.”

Charon frowned at him. “You mean our retirement f —”

“Retirement? What do I look like, _you_?” Butch scoffed grandly. “I am a beautiful spring chicken. I’ll retire when I’m dead.”

“I’ll remember that,” Charon promised, but he said a lot of things Butch didn’t care about.

* * *

‖

► _Come home with me, way beyond the sea…_

#### ►

* * *

The six of them stood outside in the dust and sand as the sun hung east, creeping toward its peak. Aggie had carefully followed Oyente’s demonstration and was proudly showing her new wrapped headband to Al, who fixed her hair around it. Charon was checking the straps on his pack, and Butch was looking at the closed door of their home from a few paces away.

“Aren’t you gonna lock it up, or something?” Declan asked. Butch turned with a face like Declan had just insulted his mother.

“You ever walk the wastes before? Huh? Have some respect!” Butch shook his head, busying his hands with lighting a fresh cigarette, and went on muttering. “ _Lock it up_. Unbelievable. If just one wrong door was locked up, I’d’ve been dead meat years ago...”

Abashed, Declan glanced at the others and was thankful none of them seemed to be paying any attention. Brash as he was, Butch definitely followed a code; though Declan could not imagine having a whole house to himself and just leaving it open to any passer-by.

“If you all don’t waste your time chit-chatting when you grab your stuff at Billy’s, then we should hit Maxi Verde by sundown,” Butch drawled, waving Oyente over to put a knapsack on her.

“Maxi Verde… that’s south,” Al said, brows knit. 

“Sure is,” Butch agreed, starting to walk. 

Declan frowned, following. “Vegas is north. As in, straight-up-Route-95-for-a-few-days north.”

“So’s Camp Searchlight,” Butch said, tersely. “Heard of it?”

Declan _had_ heard of it, but only in passing, given that they’d come west through Boulder City on their first visit to the Strip, and left the area out south through Sloan on the last, but Aggie answered first. “It’s mostly contained, isn’t it? Can’t we just go around?”

“You sure can try, babe,” Butch gravely replied, “but I wouldn’t go within five miles of that place without some heavy duty firepower. And since the big lug and I weren’t exactly sitting on a weapons cache, being retired and all, we’re gonna hit up the Linefel trading post on the other side of the mountain range first.”

The words _mountain range_ struck a chord of dread for Declan, but it went over Aggie’s head as her face lit up and she bounded past him and Al to get next to Butch. “Ooh, I always hear about that place but I’ve never been before!”

Butch tried to hide a smile and keep his face schooled, but basked in her attention nonetheless. “I, uh, got a few buddies who set up shop there.”

“Is it true you can buy a one-headed brahmin?”

“It would be nice to get some real repairs done,” Al said, watching them. Declan huffed in agreement, watching Oyente on Butch’s other side. While not animated by any measure, she was just as engaged as Aggie was by some anecdote Butch was sharing — so much so that Butch had to yank her away from a pothole she was blindly veering toward.

She seemed a little green to everything, yes, but it was appropriately guileless. She could have been one of those girls they passed by on their travels, selling maize or prickly pear fruit, never straying far from a handful of familiar stretches of road. 

Totally normal.

Declan became acutely aware of a creeping pressure across his shoulders. He glanced back and saw only Charon bringing up the rear, a few yards away. His shotgun was strapped across his back, benign; but the ghoul’s milky eyes were steadfast on Declan’s. 

“Don’t take it personally,” Al murmured, looking brightly ahead. “I think he’s just like that.”

Declan knew she was probably right, but felt the urge to check that his gun was in place all the same.

#### ■


	3. E03: Blue Moon

Like most of the communities along the Colorado, Big Bend was friendly, sparsely populated, and completely lacking in any kind of useful munitions sales; it wouldn’t do to look too defensive to the Legion camps on the other shore. Even so, with many shady areas to sit and wait out the blazing sun, offering peaceful views of sandy shore and shimmering river, it was as good a place to stop as any. 

Butch bought hand-made huaraches to replace the yucca slippers that were all they’d had to fit Oyente back at the farm. Al purchased a locally-concocted salve from an old doctor who checked her eyes out. She was sharing this with Declan as they were all sitting down, finishing off sandwiches Butch had made and packed.

On a bench next to Al, Declan began the work of rebandaging his arm over the salve, and scowled at Aggie.

“Lighten up, Dex!” Aggie insisted, wagging a dress in the air like a war banner. She held it up in front of Oyente, who was sitting on a conveniently shaped rock, taking a drink of water. “Look — it suits her perfectly!”

Declan looked at Oyente — who would probably look quite nice in the dress when she did not resemble a wary dog — and was unable to staunch his exasperation. Aggie saw it in his face and scowled, shaking the dress again, this time insistently at their mark.

“You like it, don’t you, O?”

“I do,” she said quickly, not breaking eye contact with Aggie. 

“Let her breathe,” Al ordered, wiping off her fingers.

“I don’t know why you needed to get her a fancy dress at all. What’s wrong with the one she has?” Declan griped. Aggie regarded him dubiously.

“Her _worker’s_ dress? Avi-Avi is a nice place, they won’t give her the time of day in that.”

While Oyente looked down at herself self-consciously, Declan threw his hand out, incensed. “Who wants to go to Avi-Avi?”

“I want to,” Oyente said, raising her hand timidly. Declan shook his head with a groan.

“What about you and Al? Pretty sure your fancy dresses got harvested for bandaging a ways back.”

“We don’t need ‘em,” Aggie declared, thumping her chest. “We can just go like this. We’ll be O’s… bodyguards.”

“Are you all still arguin’ about this?” Butch returned from what was definitely not the direction of the beach outhouse, but Declan was too caught up to comment. “Wrap it up. I don’t wanna hear a lick of it on the road.”

Declan scowled. “It cost a lot of money —”

“So take it out of my share!” Aggie snapped.

“— that could have been used on supplies at Linefel!”

Aggie huffed, dropping her arms; the dress swept the ground for a second before she bundled it up. “I can make it back tonight. I can double it, even.”

“‘Cause the house only wins some of the time, right?” Butch snickered, waving Oyente down. Aggie sighed, and Oyente gave her a rueful smile as she slid off her perch.

“I’m sure you can trade it in Linefel.”

Aggie scrunched her face up defiantly. “Not until you wear it out, first.”

Oyente opened her mouth to respond, but paused as Charon next to her set his hand on the pistol at his side. Declan started rising slowly off the bench, confused, and suddenly, past Charon, a man came out from the trees, coaxing a pair of brahmin and the cart they were pulling to follow along.

The man looked up and, upon noticing the lot of them, broke into a grin under an impressive mustache and much less impressive cowboy hat. He straightened, tall and wiry — not unlike Aggie — and waved at them, making his way over.

“Mornin’, folks — gosh, must be after noon, now,” he chirped, squinting at the sun. “M’name’s Nicky Needles.”

“We ain’t buyin’,” Butch said flatly, coming up behind Oyente. Nicky gave him a saccharine smile.

“Good thing, ‘cause I ain’t sellin’. I was wonderin’ if y’all might’n be headin’ out south for a spell.” He nodded along to himself, and then jabbed a thumb at the trees. “Just had a li’l tiff with my merc so I’m flyin’ solo, and I’d feel a lot safer if I had some company on the trek home.”

“Home wouldn’t happen to be… Needles, would it?” Al asked, leisurely strapping her gear on.

Nicky beamed at her. “Bingo!”

“We ain’t for hirin’ either,” Butch maintained.

“I don’t have much to offer,” Nicky sighed, plucking off his hat to rake a hand through his hair. “Hocked m’good stuff in Big Bend. Most valuable things I got now are Betty, Betsy, their cart, and an extensive _reppy-twire_ of singalong songs I know by heart — but between you an’ me, hardly anyone takes me up on the singin’.”

Butch arched his neck to check out the brahmin ambling over, then looked back at Nicky without a flicker of emotion on his face, but he said, very seriously, “I could use a nap.”

Charon tsked immediately, probably despite himself, glaring sidelong at Butch, who glared back.

“So I get a little sleepy after a meal and walkin’ in the sun for a few hours. Sue me!”

“I wouldn’t mind putting my feet up, either,” Al said, finally standing from the bench.

“Reckon ‘bout four of you could sit comfortably back there,” Nicky supplied, pleased.

“Dibs!” Aggie yelled, running over. 

“Fuckin’ kids, I swear,” Butch grumbled, stalking after her. Al grinned at the rest of them and followed.

“I’ll walk,” Oyente said, looking to Charon and Declan.

“Same here. Could use the exercise,” Declan agreed. Much as he would have loved to take it easy, he was loath to pass up the opportunity before him — because if there was one thing slimy salesman types like Nicky Needles were good for, it was making conversation. With him around, Declan stood to get some decent information out of Oyente without tipping off their gun-toting guard dog.

“Whaddya say, big guy?” Nicky asked Charon, who only stared in response. After a beat, Nicky rocked on his heels again, unperturbed. “The more the merrier!”

“Less talky, more clip-cloppy,” Butch demanded, sprawled out in the cart across from Aggie and Al, using his pack as a pillow.

“We’re planning to get to Avi-Avi by nightfall,” Al called. 

“Suits me perfect,” Nicky said, jauntily adjusting his hat on his head with a wink to Oyente. 

She made a faint, courteous smile, tilting her head. “What’s so unsafe about the way south?”

“Don’tcha know, hon’?” Nicky hunched over and looked around in a show of fear, putting on a ghostly voice. “Snatchers walk these roads. They look for folk to sell to the Legion ‘cross the river. They like to wait ‘til you’re alone ‘n’ _snatch_ ya!” He snarled the last part and grinned when she jumped. Declan refrained from patting her shoulder and tried not to let the pity show on his face too much.

Butch hauled his upper half up so he could scowl at them. “There’s been patrols crackin’ down on that shit for months, now. The big guy there’s done a few shifts himself.”

Nicky whistled low, looking Charon up and down. “We gots ourselves a professional in our midst! Lucky us.”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s a thing of majesty.” Butch rolled his eyes. “Can we _ándale_ this thing now?”

“Your wish, my command,” Nicky said with a sweeping bow, sheepishly scrambling to scoop up his hat as it fell off.

* * *

‖

« _I just wanted to make sure she gets this back._

#### ►

* * *

Despite his damnedest efforts, being blissfully unconscious until they reached Avi-Avi didn’t seem to be in the cards for Butch. He _maybe_ could have powered through the stench of sun-ripened brahmin behind, but between that, the extremely bumpy ride, and the fact that Nicky Needles did indeed have an extensive repertoire of jaunty songs, he was uncomfortable enough that he regretted trying to relax at all. Walking would have taken less effort — not that the two women snoozing against each other across from him in the cart were being very respectful of the fact.

As Nicky warbled obnoxiously and Betty and Betsy plodded ahead, Butch glared up at each of the scant whisps of white that scrolled obliviously on by in the naked blue of the sky; sorry excuses for clouds that didn’t have the decency to give shade and never knew suffering like he had.

At least the singing meant that Declan didn’t have much opportunity to ask questions. He’d tried at the start — impressively making him more suspicious to Butch than the random trader that Charon decidedly did not taking a liking to — not that _that_ was anything out of the ordinary — but Oyente had been curious about one song, then another, and then started joining in herself, and then Declan made a request or three, and then _he_ piped in here and there, and then — and _then_ the blue sky warmed up while the air cooled down a degree or two, and it was four or fifty hours later, and Butch hadn’t slept a wink.

“There’s a town,” Oyente said.

“There sure is,” Nicky agreed. “Avi-Avi workers gotta sleep somewhere.”

The cart stopped. Butch grudgingly pulled himself up into a sitting position and turned around. Ahead, the shrubbery flanking the road gave way to cleared land and a number of modest structures — some shaped strangely, more like patchwork shacks or shipping containers than houses. 

Nicky Needles grinned at him, walking around his brahmin. “Mornin’, sunshine! ‘M’afraid it’s the end of the ride.”

“Thought you were headin’ home to Needles, Nicky Needles,” Butch drawled, squinting at the man. 

“Ol’ gals here ain’t what they used to be,” Nicky said, looking at the brahmin with an apologetic smile. “I got a buddy ‘round the corner here who’ll let me put my feet up for a spell. ‘Tween you and me,” he held his hand over the side of his mouth that wasn’t facing anybody, and waggled his bushy brows, “it’s a lady buddy.”

It was absolutely possible to squint harder, and Butch did just that.

Declan came around to the other side of the cart and thumped on the railing, startling Aggie and Al into groggily indignant wakefulness. “Come on, dead weights, we’re here.”

As the three of them clambered out, Nicky hitched his thumbs in his belt loops and rocked on his heels. “You all’re gonna wanna keep headin’ due South, veer right when the road splits in two, then right again where the fence posts end. There’s a nice li’l motel called Koa’s, there. Avi-Avi’s on the left, but they’ll charge you down t’your unmentionables for a night. Then y’won’t have nothin’ left for gamblin’!”

“Thanks,” Declan said shortly. 

“I’m partial to meetin’ y’all again in the mornin’, head the rest of the way together?” Nicky grinned, knocking on his head. “Reckon I have a few more tunes clankin’ ‘round up here.”

“Sounds _great_ ,” Butch grinned back, stretching his face out in a way that Charlie, Charon — hell, most people — always saw through for the rictus of mockery it was. Nicky, of course, preened at it, and gave them a jaunty salute before heading merrily off to his lady buddy’s.

Declan sighed heavily, continuing to walk down the road with the rest of them. “For an older fella, he sure is a mile a minute.”

“He seemed nice,” Aggie said around a yawn as she stretched herself out.

“I thought… he was going to give you something,” Oyente said, haltingly, her brow furrowed. Aggie frowned at her, tilting her head to one side in question, and Oyente tilted her own head slowly in the other direction. “Didn’t he say that?”

“Like what, a good time?” Al offered salaciously, grinning wider at the face Aggie made at her. 

“He said a lotta things,” Butch said, as though just mentioning it put a weight on him, “and maybe half of it made any sense.” He glanced back and noted Declan’s line of sight — of course he was paying attention to this — and looked down at Oyente himself, shaking his head. “You’re super green, kid. Like, maxi.”

“Must be all the sun,” Al quipped, smiling at Oyente. “When we get to the motel, you can cool off and get some rest.”

“No motel,” Charon grunted, and the others were silent for a moment, not having heard his gravelly voice for hours. 

“What? I’m not roughing it when there’s a roof and a bed available!” Aggie said. Al nodded along at her side. 

“Like you haven’t had enough sleep already,” Butch grumbled. “Who said anything ‘bout roughin’ it? Avi-Avi’s got rooms.”

“But Nicky said —”

“— a lotta things,” Charon finished, and Butch smiled smugly, but it was Declan who agreed next.

“I didn’t trust him, either.” He looked skyward, tapping his fingers against his thigh. “We should be fine to get a bed — but you’re gonna have to take the floor, Aggie.”

Aggie sputtered. “Why do _I_ have to take the floor?”

“Consider it _your share_.”

“We’ll take care of the rooms,” Butch declared magnanimously, dropping back to throw an arm around Declan and Aggie each. “Then the ladies can have their little night out, and we’ll have a quiet night in, eh, Dex?”

Declan’s lips flattened into a thin line as he cast around for some excuse, leaning as far away as the hook of Butch’s arm would allow. “I wanted to check out the casino, too…”

“You swingin’ your junk around is just gonna cramp their style.” Before Declan had a chance to do more than sputter, Butch went on. “Anyway, I’m too old for that shit, and Charon sucks ass at Caravan.”

And Butch was most definitely keeping the least trustworthy of the bounty hunters as ransom until Oyente was back in their midst, safe as houses; but judging by Declan’s grimace and Al’s pitying smile, that went without saying.

* * *

‖

» _Ladies and gentlemen, this next song goes out from me to you._

#### ►

* * *

Oyente knew something was wrong as soon as the desert greenery started thinning out, replaced by an eclectic assortment of homes built from the ground up or off of scavenged and gutted pre-War campers. She knew by the agave flanking entranceways, and colourful lights strung across windows, that the buzzing in her head had definitely changed frequencies.

The group of them veered left when the road split in two, turning left again at the first road, and the massive building that was their destination, a structure that was half open-air decorated with faded patterns, and half windows upon windows in a building the colour of the sand it stood on, loomed before them. It seemed to grow even larger as they approached. 

The word _Avi_ stood proudly off one end of the open side, barely but undeniably red, and Oyente knew that it looked more impressive on the front side of the building. That’s where there was a formal entrance into the casino proper, with _Avi_ _Avi_ tall in the sun, flanking the pyramid-like skylight that often had star-struck patrons standing underneath, gawking at the pristine glass and gorgeous, protected view of the Nevadan sky.

In the dusty, quiet present, the six of them made their way to the resort’s hotel lobby. The last time she was here, there’d only been one other person at her side.

Oyente was silent as they entered and Butch went right to negotiating room rates. She didn’t want to make it obvious, but the familiarity of the clean tile, the plain walls, and the ostentatious clock behind the counter choked her. The cheery clerk was a stranger, and Oyente wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse.

_Long time, no see!_ She blanched at the prospect of someone knowing her the way she knew she’d been here before. She couldn’t even pull a hypothetical response from the growing white noise in her head.

A tear, a crinkle — then a square of cornbread appeared before her, sitting in its paper wrap, held aloft by Charon. She took it automatically, had a bite; it was a little more sweet than she was used to, but even that made her feel human again. She could eat, and she’d had this before. Not every memory in the shadows of her mind was something out to get her.

“Aztec Amber’s putting her show on at 9,” the clerk chirped, and Oyente tried not to flinch, startled out of her calm. “Y’won’t wanna miss it!”

The way to the rooms was uneventful, and the walls and flooring lost their novelty as Oyente finished off her snack. The disjointed chatter fading in and out of her head was easy to ignore in the face of Butch’s bragging (“ _... the Bishop place — they know how to put on a show!_ ”), Aggie’s excitement (“ _She’s supposed to be the best!_ ”), and Declan’s grumbling (“ _... but when_ I _want to go, you guys are ‘too tired’…_ ”).

Her stomach lurched when they got to one of the rooms, and she swayed on weighted feet while the others filed in. Butch waggled the key at Declan, declaring it his responsibility, before heavily making himself comfortable in a faded armchair. Declan took issue with this, Aggie and Al started setting down their things, and so only Charon stood by the doorway, watching Oyente stare ahead and swallow hard.

It was a great effort to make eye contact with him, and she opened her mouth to say something — anything — to dispel her horrible daze, but instead she spoke in a man’s voice with a sticky, fuzzy cadence, distant and faded like the furniture in the room: “ _More classics coming right up for you, so stay tuned_.”

Oyente slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes widened like Charon’s own. She chanced a look behind him at the others, heart pounding, trying not to linger too long on any one of them: Declan scowling, Butch sneering, Aggie yawning, and Al looking out the window. None seemed startled or surprised or that they were even aware that two of their party still lingered in the hall. 

Oyente looked back at Charon, dropped her hand slowly, and made her way inside.

“Think maybe you should stay in tonight?” Charon asked lowly as she passed, the words hardly more than a rumble in his chest.

Oyente took in the devastating familiarity of the room, knowing it was almost just like the one she’d stayed in before she’d woken up on the wrong side of the Colorado, and was terrified at the prospect of _more_ — more from her life before, more people who might know her, more static clogging her throat — but she shook her head resolutely. 

She’d known there was a casino. She hadn’t expected it to be this close.

She got ready with Aggie and Al, freshening up and changing clothes. Oyente was too distracted to appreciate the novelty of a fine dress, worrying that her silence would make them suspicious but learning that Aggie could chatter on enough for twenty people without much prompting. She waved when the other two said their goodbyes to Butch, Declan, and Charon. She smiled and nodded along to Aggie and Al’s excitement in the elevator. And when they finally set foot on the casino floor, she marvelled along with them at the colourful and gaudy decor, the polished staff busily going to and fro, the eclectic assortment of patrons expressing all sorts of excitement at great rolls, bad cards, and loaded waits.

Al looked up and gasped, taking Aggie’s hand and pointing up at the skylight revealing the clear night sky, deep and dotted with stars. Oyente tilted her head back to take the sight in herself, and dread coursed through her veins as the static drowned out everything else.

Aggie and Al smiled at her, gesturing to head further inside, and she nodded back, following. They beelined for the stage, which already had a crowd gathered, making small talk and finding seats. Her companions looked back at her curiously and she waved them on with a nervous smile, standing herself by the seating partition, hoping they wouldn’t insist too much. They quickly took seats themselves not too far away, pointedly leaving one open between them.

Oyente tried to breathe. Around her, people were surely chattering about the show, but she couldn’t make out any sounds save for the harsh drone filling her skull. 

Someone touched her elbow, and she turned, and through the noise she heard: “Maricris! I thought that was you. Where’ve you been?”

There was no face to the speaker; only something deep and dark and dotted with stars.

“We were worried sick, you know. After Jasper’s birthday came and went…”

Then there was nothing at all.

* * *

‖

« _Tie her up._

_She’s breathing hard, and struggling. There is dust in her lungs. The ground is rough and scrapes her skin. Above is a clear and endless pit of black._

_When did she get outside?_

« _Hurry!_

_They wrench her arms back painfully. The rope is coarse like the sand and dirt in her face. She wants to scream but she doesn’t exactly know how. All she can do is kick, and thrash, and gasp for air. It’s night but her skin is hot, and her hair sticks to her neck and chin._

_She tries to turn her head back, look behind her. There is nothing; a stretch of flat, unforgiving land that is swallowed by the night._

_Shouldn’t there have been a casino? The question lances through her temple like a knife and she shudders with the pain of it. Her nose drips; she swallows and tastes copper._

_Inside, pooling behind her ears, is a whisper, an itch; then all too suddenly it is blaring static, startling her, making her eyes sting, making her gag. They wrap a rag around her mouth that she bleeds onto, and shove her back into a cart that’s no more kind than the dirt they pulled her from._

_They continue through the desert. She looks forlornly to the stars, remembers their image above glass, and the memory stabs through her skull again, leaving her shaking; and then, simply leaving her._

#### ►

* * *

It had been surprisingly easy to slip out of the hotel room, as for all his griping, Declan was actually quite competitive when it came to Caravan, even while decrying it as an old man’s pastime. Charon left him and Butch to no fanfare, and took the stairs down to the main floor.

As a ghoul of particularly large stature, he had a tendency to attract attention, but years (and _years_ ) of experience had taught him that, more often than not, most people were too caught up in their own drama to pay him any heed. So long as he wasn’t doing a jig or letting his deep disdain show too much on his face, a stranger would notice him and forget him in quick succession. After all, there were far more interesting or pressing matters hounding the good citizens of the Mojave than a tall shuffler who, at the end of the day, looked like any other merc.

It was through this phenomenon that Charon continued through Avi-Avi unfettered, and he caught sight of the three young women before they could catch sight of him — and they would not catch sight of him, as the shiny baubles of Avi-Avi’s second-rate casino were evidently items of wonder, each more attention-grabbing than the next.

Except, of course, to Oyente, who smiled like she was trying not to puke.

Charon kept a practiced distance from the trio as they made their way through the crowds, careful to make himself look otherwise occupied. He checked on them in measured doses, between perusing a chart of odds, ordering a basic cocktail, and getting himself a handful of chips. They gawked at various fancy dressers, hid their laughter at a failed bet, and quickly joined the group of people getting ready to watch Aztec Amber at 9 PM. 

Oyente stayed behind, standing before the seating area. 

Then one of the staff approached her.

Her face changed; at this distance, Charon couldn’t get a grasp on how. She was upright, but her whole body seemed to list ever so slightly. He tapped a chip against the bar, debating on a closer vantage point, when a man swaggered out from the cluster of patrons and clapped a hand on Oyente’s shoulder, cheerfully assuaging the concerned croupier. That grin and mustache were clear as day across the casino floor, raising gooseflesh across the scant skin that remained on the back of Charon’s neck and getting him to his feet — it was so-called Nicky Needles, who had now successfully waved the dealer away, and was guiding Oyente away next.

Charon started to make his way after them. He glanced back at Aggie and Al, who had left their seats and were following the pair as well. The possibility that they were in on this came and left as he watched them rush ahead to the door Oyente disappeared through; whatever their ultimate agenda was, they did not set his teeth on edge the way Nicky Needles did.

He let them go and pivoted to another side exit, which by design led into the same service hall. He heard a scuffle, and the creaking groan of a heavy metal door; shouts, rapid footsteps, and a sudden, piercing burst of static that was quickly cut off by the door slamming shut. It was shoved open again a few moments later, and by the time it closed, Charon had found another exit around the corner.

The night was cold, in stark contrast to the heat they’d spent the day walking in. There were cigarette butts and empty bottles around his feet, their scents thick and stale in the air. A few light fixtures flickered and buzzed on the walls outside, evidently much lower in maintenance priority than the polished sconces that customers saw. Some dumpsters blocked his view of the other exit, but he could hear the confrontation: Aggie barking expletives, and Nicky Needles, with that immovable joviality, telling her to calm down.

“Your friend here is a lot of trouble,” he grunted, presumably trying to keep the friend in question still. “I’m tellin’ you right now, y’all don’t want no part o’ this.”

Charon had Nicky Needles in his sights as soon as the trader stepped backward beyond the dumpsters. Needles had one hand with a gun trained in front of him at Aggie and Al, and the other arm wrapped around Oyente’s throat, which she clawed at viciously, writhing and kicking as he dragged her back. 

Needles was saying, “You can let me go on my way, easy peasy now, or…” and Charon, with a clear, unobstructed view of the man’s head, pulled the trigger before the trader could explain whatever other option he was giving them. His lifeless body teetered over to the side and crumpled; Oyente stumbled down with it.

Aggie rushed forward to help Oyente out of the corpse’s grasp, dark splotches of blood on the girl’s yellow silk, and Al stepped into sight with her gun trained right on Charon, quickly pointing it to the ground when she realized who he was.

“What —?” Al watched him, dumbfounded, as he set to patting down Nicky Needles’s body, emptying his pockets. “I guess I should have known you wouldn’t be far.”

Aggie was crouched down with Oyente, unconscious, in her arms, wiping the blood off her face. Aggie glanced over at Charon, her expression uncharacteristically grim. Charon ignored them, cataloguing his findings as he went: some ammo, a lighter, a wallet with a mix of dollars and denarii; finally, in a hip pouch, a little handbound notebook, with names, numbers, and lyrics in excessively loopy handwriting. He bent the pages in one hand and lifted his thumb to flip through them; they stopped where a separate piece of paper had been folded into quarters and tucked away.

Printed on the paper was a header with a row of red diamonds, and a field of green.

_Take her for a spin!_

The same loopy writing was all over the names listed, circles and arrows notating Nicky Needles’s assumptions and intel; he’d put a star next to _Maricris Calle_ and _Jasper Klinai_.

Charon sighed to himself, tucking the page back into the notebook, and the notebook into a pocket of his own. He jabbed a finger at Al, then down at the body. She grimaced but came over as directed, crouching down to hook her arms around the dead man’s shoulders. Charon got a hold of the booted ankles, and together they dumped Nicky Needles into the trash.

* * *

‖

► _You heard me saying a prayer for someone I really could care for..._

#### ►

* * *

“I knew something was off about him,” Declan groused, slumping back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. Across the table, Butch snorted. 

“Yeah, ‘cause like smells like, right?”

Declan shot the older man a glare, but Aggie heaved a mighty sigh from one of the beds in lieu of any response to that, rubbing her face. Al, next to Declan, gathered the playing cards together.

“He had a copy of the list,” she said carefully, her eyes flicking to Butch, who was stoic, then Declan, who straightened up to better scowl at Butch.

“You said she wasn’t on that list —”

“ _She_ said her own damn name,” Butch snapped back, but Declan was undeterred.

“Then how come he went after her, huh?”

“Ain’t it obvious? We took an escaped slave to one of the main hubs crossin’ over the Colorado. Needles must’ve figured some asshole would pay sweet coin to get her back.” Butch shook his head and pressed a palm to his face in much the same way Aggie had. “Shoulda gotten her new threads, at least.”

_No way_ , Declan thought, staring. _No way Nicky Needles trailed us from Big Bend just to return a runaway_. But he pressed no further. The possibility that Oyente was being hunted by some entitled Legionnaire humiliated by a loss of property was honestly much more likely than her being recognized for her connection to a mysterious list of names that included no less than one (1) Deathclaw Psychic. 

Still, stolen snippets of conversation were seeded in his mind — _a robot, an experiment, or something_. Nicky Needles could have been an opportunistic Snatcher who just so happened to have his own copy of the list from the Lucky 38. Declan had witnessed stranger coincidences.

Deep in his gut, he did not believe that this was one of them.

“I’m hittin’ the sack,” Butch declared, starting to leave. The room he’d gotten for himself, Charon, and Oyente was on another floor. “You all oughta catch some Z’s, too. Soon as the kid’s up, we’re outta here.”

None of them, save for Oyente, were able to get much sleep at all.

“She went along with him easy enough,” Al recounted as the three of them lay awake in the dark. “She didn’t even hear us when we called her.” 

“But when we got to the hallway she was fighting against him like crazy. It didn’t even take us a minute to catch up,” Aggie said. 

Declan watched the little strip of light on the ceiling that came from somewhere outside. “So she caught on eventually.”

“I don’t know,” Al hummed. “Her face was different. Kind of... wild.”

“I felt like she didn’t even recognize me,” Aggie added. “There’s definitely something wrong with her.”

They were silent for a while after that. In the darkness, some neighbouring room’s muffled music seemed amplified, but remained indiscernible. 

“I think she went through something bad,” Al said finally.

Declan huffed and turned to his side, tired of being tired. “Yeah, well. Who hasn’t.”

#### ■


	4. E04: Biscuit

She woke with the sun, as she had before even the Legion demanded it so. Sometimes she'd been awake before dawn spilled upward into the sky, starting work while the cold darkness reigned endlessly overhead; well into her day and dirt by the time it finally cracked.

That's what it meant to live off the land.

Optavi stepped outside of her patchwork tent and took a moment to watch the sun rise. She closed her eyes, breathing deep of the river behind her, and tried to conjure the memory of her life before this: freshly turned earth, the river closer still, and the husband calling out to her from across the field.

She had trouble pulling up the sound of him, hearing instead another man's voice.

She opened her eyes to desert, their meagre camp in the midst of it. There was nothing here but the fire to start and supplies to rummage through for breakfast.

Optavi had dollops of wheat batter sizzling in the pan when the larger, nicer tent’s flaps parted and Regor emerged, squinting in the light, rubbing absently at the stubble on his chin. She looked away before his eyes fell on her, keeping her attention steadfast on the cooking pancakes.

"Smells good," he said as he approached, in the voice that supplanted her husband's. She looked up at him and he smiled, and she wondered not for the first time if it were a blessing or a curse that he was more handsome than Trev had been — not that it was a high bar to begin with, truth be told. She'd loved her husband for the way he looked at her, for his family who adored her — so unlike her own, always fractured and fighting; for his ambition that had them hit the road on their honeymoon and leave the back-breaking work behind. When their caravan was attacked, she'd loved him still, even as he fled without her.

She'd loved him when he hit the ground, bullets in his back. It was all too sudden for her to know any better.

The smell of soil and the river's song were what she missed from her last life. Optavi flipped the pancakes and was another woman entirely. 

"It's almost ready," she said to Regor, smiling back. He regarded her as Trev once had, when he was alive and not a coward. He tucked some of her hair delicately behind her ear.

A blessing.

Then he looked behind her at the Colorado and was distant again. Optavi searched his face for a split second before dropping her eyes to the pan once more. She was well familiar with the things men said in the silent planes of their features; set jaws and knit brows and thinned lips that meant things like, _I am thinking of someone else. I am not telling you the truth. I am leaving you._

She didn't want to hear it.

Regor exhaled and crouched next to her, bumping her knee with his.

"With just the two of us having breakfast, it's kind of like a date, isn't it?"

Optavi frowned at him right away, glancing at the tent. "What about…?"

Regor grunted, waving his hand. "It'll take all this food to make up the energy we need to wake Dina up."

"She wouldn't be happy about a date," Optavi said, moving away to take the pan off the fire. Regor followed her close as she dug out their jar of syrup.

"She's not happy about a lot of things," he scoffed. His face softened around a smile. "Not like you, Optavi. You always take things in stride."

He was generous with praise, and she would have quietly preened at that; but in the early morning air, where she remembered ground and water and her heart’s spilled blood, she remembered also what she used to be called, something she hadn’t heard out loud in years. Regor had named her when he bought her. Like a pet.

Optavi looked over to the river they would cross today, thinking of the girl who’d knocked him unconscious somehow and fled. The sliver of a dream that had pierced her disillusionment, if only for a moment. 

She hoped Oyente was far, far away by now.

* * *

‖

« _first quarter 2 days ago slower more down. simple makes it drip forget_

#### ►

* * *

“Why not just stim her?” Declan asked, knowing they had a respectable stock of Stimpaks handy, but it was Al who shook her head.

“We’ve only got regular ones, and they’re too dangerous to use when we’re not sure what’s wrong with her. She needs a doctor.”

“Can’t risk the one ‘round here,” Butch said, scowling, “but Linefel’s still half a day away.”

Aggie, physically struck by her own realization, squeaked with excitement. “We know doctors in Sixty! That’s only, like, an hour west of here.”

Butch’s scowl deepened. “Sixty’s got a pop’ of sixty arms and legs combined — if it even is that many. When’d it get doctors — _plural_?”

“One’s more of an animal doctor,” Declan supplied helpfully, though Butch’s face shockingly did not read as finding the information any more enlightening. “They like to travel to different settlements and help out for a few weeks. They’ll be in Sixty for about another month.”

After assuring Butch that there was in fact a human’s doctor in addition to the animal doctor, they all gathered their belongings and left Avi-Avi under the cover of a quiet dawn, before much more light broke through the sky and any patrons were awake enough to bemoan their hangovers. 

Charon carried the still-unconscious Oyente on his back, his pack and shotgun entrusted to Butch, and Oyente’s pack on Aggie. The extra weight was clearly a burden by the time they came upon their destination, but Charon likely could have walked all the way to Linefel without breaking a sweat — not that Declan was sure, exactly, if he was one of those ghouls who could still sweat.

Sixty Shrubs was small enough that for a while they saw nothing ahead, and then suddenly the whole of the little village was spread out before them, a handful of shacks and Brahmin and plots that were more like afterthought gardens than farmland, all against the backdrop of a mountain range that gave Declan goosebumps to gaze upon. But for one or two people puttering about, Sixty looked abandoned.

The last time he’d been here was in the dead of night, so there had been at least a few lights on, giving the place some semblance of activity.

“Talk about podunk,” Butch grumbled around his third or fourth cigarette of the morning. “I don’t see no doctors.”

"They're staying at the butcher's," Aggie said cheerfully, leading the way. They filed into the open door of one shack, bypassing the counter behind which an elderly woman was sat and snoozing, but Aggie stopped short, causing the rest of them to pile up behind her in the narrow hall.

“What _now_ ,” Butch complained predictably. Declan craned his neck to look over him, Al, and Aggie to see that the stock room the doctors had been set up in was completely empty now. Aggie turned to him with panic on her face.

“Dex — they’re gone!”

Declan frowned at the room, not fully comprehending the situation — Elaine and Shaun had been pretty clear about their schedule, and he couldn’t imagine much had changed in the last four or five days since they’d seen each other.

“You lookin’ for those _medikos_?” 

The elderly woman was awake now, though the way she peered at them under heavy lids threw that into some question. She bared scant teeth in what looked like might have been a grin, if only her facial muscles were strong enough to get it there.

“You know where they are?” Aggie asked, hopefully. The old woman nodded delicately, then held her hand out, curling it twice in a sharp, quick action that was completely at odds with the rest of her countenance. Declan resisted the urge to roll his eyes; he was well acquainted with the markers of avarice, seemingly the one thing the woman had that was not weathered by age.

Aggie started digging in her pockets, while Al sighed, flicking open a hip pouch. “You take dollars?”

The woman remained motionless until the bills were offered. She snatched them and settled back into her chair. 

“They’re out back,” she croaked.

Aggie sputtered, and Butch gave her a pat on the back as he and the rest of them filed out, trudging around the little house to find that the two doctors were indeed still around, but not for long, as they were in the process of taking down their medical tent.

Elaine noticed them first, pushing her dark hair out of her face and nudging her husband, who blinked up at her, then at them, then stumbled back.

“Oh — _shit_! Oh, man. Sorry,” Shaun said to Charon. “I thought you had some crazy growth on your back, but you’re obviously carrying someone. Um. I’m Shaun.” He extended a hand that Charon summarily ignored.

“Good heavens, hon’,” Elaine sighed.

“He’s had worse,” Butch said easily, putting the man out of his misery by shaking his hand.

Aggie went and hugged Elaine, then Shaun in greeting after Al did the same. “Why are you guys packing up? I thought you were staying for a while still.”

Husband and wife exchanged a look. Shaun started. “After you all came by, we thought that maybe it would be better if we started heading to Sheephole sooner rather than later.”

“What? Because of the Deathclaws?”

“No one’s seen a Deathclaw come down since…” Butch trailed off, glancing over at Declan, and he knew they were both remembering their conversation that first night they met, when Butch was trying to figure out if Declan was some sort of polygamist wife beater and Declan had eased his concerns by telling him they were just harmless, money-grubbing bounty hunters. In hindsight, not the greatest reveal to a man they’d been trying to work over, but there was no changing the past now.

“I mean, sure,” Shaun went on obliviously. “But we don’t want to court misfortune by staying so close to the mountains, not with Elaine — uh, under the weather.”

Aggie turned to Elaine with wide eyes. “Oh no, are you sick?”

Elaine cleared her throat primly. “Just a little cough. But better safe than sorry, you know. We don’t want to be caught unaware if something happens and Deathclaws start swarming around. Right, hon?”

“Yeah, and especially not with some guy —”

Shaun cut himself off quickly, looking over at Charon again, and the rest of them turned curiously to see Oyente shift, brows drawing together. It was the most life Declan had seen in her since she’d left with Aggie and Al to hit up the casino. Her mouth opened and she mumbled something indiscernible before her body gradually slackened again.

In a strange thought he dismissed as quickly as it struck him, Declan could have sworn he caught a snippet of static.

“What’d she say?” Butch asked.

Charon paused before answering. “ _Too close to them_.”

It set Declan on edge to hear, but Butch nodded like it was totally normal. Butch turned to Elaine and Shaun and jabbed a thumb toward Charon and Oyente. “We need help for our crazy growth, there. She’s been unconscious and unresponsive for about twelve hours now. ‘Cept for that.”

Elaine’s eyes widened, and she looked over at the girl who had suspicious dark stains on her dress. “Was she injured?”

“Nah. We could’ve taken care of that.”

Shaun dragged a cot out from where it was folded and leaning against the butcher’s house, setting it up and directing Charon over. Together they lay Oyente down on it and Elaine checked her eyes with a penlight, then went to feel for a pulse, timing it against her wristwatch.

“What happened?” Elaine asked, in between muttering to herself. “Did she pass out out of nowhere?”

Butch slid his hands into his pockets with all the airs of someone who had better things to do; Declan wouldn’t’ve been surprised if the man had been particularly petulant with authority figures as a youth. “She had kind of a shock. Probably.”

“A man was trying to kidnap her,” Al explained. “Then she was able to get free when he — Charon — shot him dead… but she fainted after that.”

Shaun and Elaine both flicked a look over at the ghoul, wary, but they continued their work around Oyente’s prone form, with Shaun gathering and handing over tools and Elaine taking readings and jotting down notes. It was lucky that they had left their medical supplies to be packed up last of their things.

“Everything’s coming up well within normal bounds, but BP’s a little on the low side,” Elaine said, biting her lip. “Hon’, salt of Bighorner? And you’re sure she wasn’t injured?”

“I don’t think so,” Aggie said, frowning. 

Shaun dug through one of their medical bags and produced a little jar, which Elaine took with gratitude. As she examined the crystalline substance against the sunlight, Shaun braced himself over the cot and, heedless of what were now clearly dried splatters of blood on her dress, settled an arm across Oyente’s shoulders, to which Butch began to protest.

“It’s just in case,” Shaun said. He had a calm, reassuring cadence that made it hard to want to argue with him. “If she does have an injury, we don’t want her to accidentally jerk around and make it worse. Can you keep her head steady?”

Butch grumbled, the spitting image of a large sulky teenager, but he stepped up all the same, placing his hands as directed. Elaine popped the cork from the jar and held it near Oyente’s chin, gently waving it back and forth. 

Aggie took Al’s hand and watched. There was a moment of stillness that stretched on as it seemed no one dare disturb it by taking a breath or making a sound, then very suddenly Oyente inhaled sharply, with Shaun and Butch tensing over her as her chest rose and she began to cough and sputter. Elaine pulled the jar of salts away and closed it, setting it aside.

Oyente’s eyes fluttered open, watery and squinting in the light. Shaun removed his arm and straightened up, bidding Butch to do the same. Oyente quickly brought her hands up, one to cover her mouth as she cleared her throat, and the other to shield her eyes from the sun.

“‘Bout time,” Butch groused, while the rigidity in the line of his shoulders diminished considerably. Aggie hugged Al, grinning; but Al glanced at Declan and he knew she felt the same apprehension he had since Oyente mumbled from Charon’s back.

“Hey, sweetie,” Elaine said softly, tilting her head to try and observe her patient better. “How are you feeling?”

Oyente was panting still, but she lowered her hand to take the stranger in with wide eyes, then Shaun, then Butch next to him. 

“Need to… go…” she rasped, so quiet it was almost tangled up on the scant breeze. She started to pull herself up into a sitting position.

“It’s alright, Oyente, Nicky’s gone now,” Aggie said, stepping forward. Oyente turned to her, looking alarmed, then she turned again the other way and craned her neck back. Declan looked up as well; the Dead Mountains in the distance were a silhouette of jagged menace cutting into the sky.

Declan came forward, and before he could say anything, Oyente whirled around again and pinned him with that same agitated stare. He grimaced, guilty that he felt too disconcerted himself to take any pity on her — so small and scared after an evening that must have been, by all accounts, terrifying. 

But her terror was for these mountains, and it ran so deep it had stirred her where none of their efforts could. It spoke so intimately to his own deep dread of the man they’d encountered in them that he couldn’t fathom it was for anything else.

“Is it what’s up there?” he asked, his limbs, his shoulders tight with tension. “Is that what you’re afraid of?”

She flinched, grit her teeth, but met his eyes before nodding slowly. She kept him pinned with the weight of her gaze, and as his trepidation mounted, her own seemed to dissolve away; stiff, adrenaline-borne posture melting down into a sombre resignation. For a moment her eyes flicked over to Al behind him, before returning to his, lips thinned.

Softly, Oyente said, “you’ve met him,” and Declan did not refute her.

* * *

‖

► _Stranger things will come your way…_

#### ►

* * *

“I grew up with my sister and grandparents in Havasu, on a little farm by the river — but before we settled down there, we were part of a travelling caravan. On one of our routes, we came across a boy orphaned by a raider attack. Our grandparents took him in, and he was raised alongside us as our brother.

“He was a deeply troubled child, though I didn’t understand that at the time. All I knew was that he and our sister were always fighting, and he was never very nice to me, either. He was always trying to tell us what to do. Our grandparents were endlessly patient with him, and after a while, he seemed to respond to them — he started arguments less, helped with chores more, and showed a kindness to the livestock that we had never seen in him before.

“Then, when we were teenagers, our sister disappeared. He thought it was his fault, that he’d fought with her one too many times and made her run away. I worked for a while at the inn near the crossroads, mostly to see if I would hear anything about her, but he didn’t like that, so I quit. I didn’t want to make him mad. I believed him a bit, when he said he made our sister run away — not because they fought too much, but because I finally noticed all these little things that made me think he could do it.

“He always ended up getting his way when he fought with us. My grandparents’ patience with him was unfailing, and they never extended it to us the same way. And he never, not once, had a problem with the animals. I thought, maybe, he _made_ our sister run away the way he was making our grandparents listen to him, the way he made the animals listen to him, and that he could make me do things, too.

“A year or so later, Abela passed. I can’t remember what the doctor said happened, because all I could think was that, somehow, my brother had something to do with it. But Abelo had been having a hard time with his memory, and it only got worse when it was just the three of us left. There was hardly any time to be frightened for what happened to Abela, or angry, because Abelo needed more and more help each day, and my brother barely spent any time at home anymore. 

“On the nights he didn’t come back, I would wonder if he ran away like our sister did. Sometimes, I hoped he had. But he always came home eventually, and he started to pressure me to leave with him — to abandon Abelo and start somewhere fresh. I was still wary of my brother then, still didn’t want to make him angry, but I refused to leave Abelo. After years of his love and care, he needed help, he needed me, and I wanted to be there for him as long as I could.

“When Abelo died, I knew it was my brother getting his way again. He was worse then, too — not only controlling, but scared as well. He thought he was being hunted, and he was so sure of this that I started to fear getting caught myself. We left Havasu and headed north in a panic.

“He made us take on different names. He called himself Jasper, and called me Maricris. He said they were the names of his _real_ siblings, that he had real brothers and sisters but they were all gone and he was the only one left. I didn’t know what to think of it. I just listened to him and did what he wanted, because if I didn’t… I was sure I’d be next.

“Eventually, we made our way far up enough to Avi-Avi. We started working there for room and board, and I think the constant changing faces appealed to him, made him feel anonymous, because we stayed there for longer than we’d stayed in any other place. He relaxed more, and I began to fear him less. I made friends with the other workers, and that made me feel safer. We got comfortable. We got along.

“The day before his birthday, I cut my shift short so I could wrap and hide his gift in our room — but he was already there when I came in. He’d torn the place apart, and was stuffing things into a pack, muttering to himself. I thought about running, like I’d never come upstairs, but he noticed me before I could get myself to move.

“He said we had been caught, and we had to leave. He heard one of the patrons talking about him and what he’d done and we were no longer safe at Avi-Avi. But I didn’t want to leave. And I had friends there, friends that were his, too. I didn’t think he hurt them like he’d hurt Abelo.

“And I was right. The only one he hurt was me.

“Hard as I try, I can’t remember what he did. I only know that, one moment, we were arguing, and the next, I was somewhere in the desert, far from Avi-Avi… far from anywhere I knew. I tried to piece things together but doing so brought on intense headaches. I couldn’t understand it, and I kept on losing memories to grasp at. By the time we arrived at the slave pens, I had nothing at all. Not even a name.

“An elderly woman decided to call me Oyente. She said it was because I was a good listener. Listening was all I could do. I was desperate for any scrap of what I could feel was missing. It wasn’t until last night… someone recognized me. They called me Maricris. They mentioned Jasper. And then I was in the desert again, being dragged under the stars, and I remembered.

“I remembered all of it.”

* * *

‖

» _You should have listened to me._

#### ►

* * *

“Your brother’s up there in the mountains,” Declan said. He could always be counted on to forge ahead when Al and Aggie were lost in the details; focused and straightforward, sometimes too much so, while they grappled with the delicacies of social niceties and the human condition. 

Besides that, he was the only one in this conversation with Oyente, despite the fact that they’d all stayed and listened to her story. Aggie and Al were leaning against the wall of the butcher’s shack, with Charon on their side past the doorway, standing upright and stockstill since Oyente awakened. Butch was perched on the edge of a worn old bench that was less a piece of furniture and more like a slab of ancient wood had fallen over and people, like him and the doctors next to him, figured it was good enough for a moment’s repose. 

The rest of them an audience, it was Declan alone engaged with Oyente, sitting next to her on the cot. He didn’t show much on his face by way of sympathy or pity; he was only concerned with putting the pieces together. “His real name is Eugene Stier, isn’t it?”

Oyente twitched like just hearing the name was a slap to the face. “How did you know?”

Declan patted at his pockets, pulling a folded page from one, and one more tattered and wrinkled from another. The first — the list — he handed to Oyente, who took it delicately, opening it the way one would handle petals. “Did he mention any of those other names? Were they all his siblings?”

She lifted a shoulder in a listless shrug. “He told me some but not all of these… I can’t say for sure if they were all related. But he said he had brothers and sisters, plural, and they were all dead now except for him.”

Al let out a breath, looking over at Aggie next to her. Aggie was fixated on Oyente, but ran her thumb over Al’s knuckles in response. 

They had that list for nearly a year. For months they’d worked on it, travelling across territories and wilderness alike, hunting for any rumor, any throwaway name in an anecdote that might point them to one of the names. They’d struck gold, nearly died for it, and decided to double back and try again with someone else because Eugene Stier and his Deathclaws were more than they’d been ready for.

Not only was he the worst of them, he was the last of them.

“We came across this at the Mojave Express outpost in Primm,” Declan explained, opening and smoothing out the second sheet of paper with perfunctory care. “For a while, it was our only lead, but eventually it pointed us up there.”

He held it out to her and Oyente set the list down to take it lightly by its edges. She frowned as she read it, the way the three of them had time and again — it was less a letter and more a string of words that chased thoughts they would never catch up with, marred with blocks of striked-out text and unidentifiable stains. They’d been able to glean a scant clue or two from the barely coherent content, but their biggest hint, the reason they’d held onto it for so long, came from four little letters: _m.c._ in the salutation, and _e.s._ in closing.

Oyente’s fingers curled into the worn paper. “This is… from Eugene?”

“And to you — well, unless it was for the real Maricris.” Declan waved a hand with resignation. He considered her a moment longer before turning his head to address Al and Aggie. “Looks like we get to head back up there sooner than we thought.”

Al shuddered as Aggie exclaimed her disbelief, but Butch was the one who responded, in a lazily arrogant tone that was at odds with the hard glare he pinned on Declan. “ _We’re_ headin’ to Linefel like we planned and —”

“Yeah, we should go to Linefel as planned,” Declan interrupted. “The guy’s living in a Deathclaw nest that he can _control_. We didn’t make it within a hundred feet of him last time before getting our asses kicked.”

“Keep pushin’ it and y’won’t make it ten feet before _I_ kick your ass,” Butch sneered. “We ain’t your mercs and we ain’t here to make up for your mission failure. This kid is clearly not in the condition to be traipsin’ around Deathclaws and a psycho orphan who handed her off to slavers.”

Declan turned quickly back to Oyente, but when he opened his mouth no sound came out. Oyente was very still, staring at the letter in her hands; it crumpled further in her white-knuckled grasp.

He tried again. “Oyente.” After a second’s delay, her eyes snapped to his. “The head of Vegas — the very _wealthy_ head of Vegas — wants Eugene Stier brought to him, and I think, with you there, we have a very good chance of bringing him in.”

He stopped short as Butch shot up and stalked over, but Aggie was quick to hold the older man back, Al quick to flank him. He shook them off and gestured angrily over at Charon, but the ghoul simply looked on impassively.

“It’s okay,” Oyente said softly, facing Butch. “It’s okay. I — I think he’s right…”

“You don’t know anything,” he bit out. “Not about being okay, and not about monsters,” and Oyente tried and failed to repress a scowl.

“He’s my brother —”

“You’re just a fuckin’ kid —” and then Butch cut himself off, frowning tremendously. He was an irritable man at the best of times, always contrary, but Al had never seen him angry like this. From the look on Oyente’s face, a clash of offence and unease, she hadn’t, either. It was so potent it seemed to hang and tremble in the air of silence around them. 

Oyente got to her feet, her hand lingering on the cot. Butch’s face morphed from enraged to stricken, then to something cooled and cultivated, a mask well-worn. Whatever spark had ignited was smothered at that.

“I want to see him,” Oyente said.

“Fine,” Butch replied at a tepid 68 degrees, “but you’re getting a fuckin’ haircut before we go.”

As if that made any sense to her — because Al certainly didn’t understand it — Oyente nodded, and turned to Declan.

“This man… Garrett Deth. What if he wants to hurt Eugene?”

Declan shrugged and gave her a superficial smile, never one to shy away from the cold hard truth. “It’s possible. He might deserve it, don’t you think?” 

Leaving Oyente to ponder that, Declan gathered his pages and refolded them. He got up and bobbed his head in the direction of the doctors, silent parties to their drama. “Do you think you guys can stay put here for a few more days, just in case?”

“So we can wait for you to kick the Deathclaw nest again?” Elaine drawled, unimpressed, but she peeked at Oyente and softened. Lips pursed, she turned to her husband, who kissed her temple and settled his hand on her back. She gave him a little smile before looking back at Declan, falsely cavalier. “We can stay a little longer.”

Shaun suggested giving them a quick check up before they hit the road, and Al, having nursed her tender eye since they’d been here last, was grateful for the opportunity. The backyard of the butcher’s shack was full of activity again, with Elaine and Shaun turning clinical once more, and the rest of them sorting themselves out with preparations for the day ahead.

If there was a thread of anger around them still, it faded completely soon enough.

* * *

‖

► _You abandoned me, how I suffer…_

#### ►

* * *

The butcher’s bathroom was cramped enough with its own amenities, let alone a pair of people and a stool wedging themselves in there, but it was the only place with a mirror and so it was where Butch and Oyente were holed up, even if half the stool and all of Butch had to stand in the shower stall to fit.

He’d worked in worse conditions: caves where the campfire’s flickering served more to cast shadow than illuminate, and sometimes there’d be a glow from strange fungi that was suspicious at best and nauseating at worse; back in the vault, where the lights were bright and sterile, space was ample enough, and his equipment was always pristine, but the clientele was boring, condescending, or both; Kansas, where there were amenities and sunlight, and Charlie finally told him to just shave it all off after Butch had grown quiet, trying to figure out how to salvage what was left.

His elbows bumped into the tiles if he wasn’t careful, and the single lightbulb didn’t seem to be putting much effort into its singular duty, but the mirror was whole and Oyente looked content to let him work as he wished, nodding easily as he slid his hand up and up in the air by her face, stopping just by her ear. It was possible she would end up crying after she saw the final product — he’d suffered that before, not because he’d done a bad job because he was a fuckin’ artist at this point, but because people sometimes did not realize just how closely tied they were to their image of themselves until it was too late.

Butch gathered her hair at the nape of her neck. It was heavy in his fingers; healthy, glossy, black. It was going to be a shame to shear, but sentiment would only weigh you down.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, after the first cut. Oyente in the mirror looked from his hands to his face. “When I was your age, this kid I knew left the vault and went on a crusade across the Capitol. Her dad was this egghead whose life’s work was bringin’ clean water to our end of the Wastes. He died. She wanted to. She — she tried to.” 

Butch’s hands stopped for a moment so short that he didn’t notice it himself. “She knew walking in there would give her a massive dose of rads, but it was the last step to completing her dad’s project, so of course she did it. Then the Brotherhood finally got off their asses and got her some goddamn medical attention. It didn’t happen right away. Took nearly a decade. But she got what she wanted.” 

He paused anew and clenched his jaw, glaring at the back of Oyente’s head. This was something he’d thought about since that day at the Jefferson Memorial — when he’d only been out of the vault for a few months — but not once had he been able to speak it past his lips. Not even to Charon. Butch swallowed, and his fingers were deft again, combing and cutting.

“If any of those guys — the scientists, the Brotherhood — if they’d had their shit together enough to clean up their own messes, she’d be alive and well today. But they called her their hero and she was happy to play the part, right up to when it got her killed. Now all that’s left of her is a pile of bones under some statue that don’t even look like her.”

Butch took in a deep breath, exhaling steadily. He kept his eyes on Oyente’s hair, shorter than his now, nearly evened out. 

“We were really just kids, y’know. It hadn’t been long since we were arguin’ over who would really win between Grognak ‘n’ Grelok — uh, comic book characters,” he amended, catching sight of Oyente’s furrowed brow. “See? That was old for us, and we were _young_.”

Oyente smiled a little at that, and Butch moved to set his scissors down, cursing as he banged his elbow spectacularly against the shower stall. He rubbed it vigorously, grabbing a small brush used to dust stray hairs off his clients.

“What I’m tryin’ to say is, you, you’re like we were. ‘Cept we were _babies_. We grew up in a vault, and not one of those fucked up experimental ones, neither. It was oppressive as hell, but cushy. Normal. Up ‘til Charlie left, the scariest thing I’d seen was a radroach.”

He finished up and set the brush down, peering into the mirror and using his hands to arrange Oyente’s hair just so. She had a good face for different styles, and this shorter cut highlighted the androgyny in her features; with the shirt and overalls one of the Sixty Shrub settlers was happy to sell to them, whoever was out there hunting the Oyente that was a runaway slave would be hard pressed to give this person a second look.

“You, you’re young, but you’re not a kid like we were.” He held her gaze, then dropped it, starting to gather his things. “Shouldn’t’ve yelled atcha. There’re all sorts of slaver groups across the U.S. and I ain’t never seen a pretty one.”

“I was mostly left alone,” Oyente said softly. “Um. Until the end.”

Butch snorted. “Lucky you. Guess your brother’s the bigger fish? He sounds a lot worse than a radroach.”

“He’s not a monster,” she said to that, standing and twisting to pin Butch with reproach. The fresh cut let her fully shed the skin of the lost girl that stumbled onto their farm, and she was coming into her own as she remembered herself; someone with a spine and a stare. Unfortunately for her, Butch was well acquainted with spines and stares in a multitude of fashions. Impassive, he rose a single brow in response.

“O. How much of that little story of yours was the truth?”

He could see it in her eyes how she quickly closed herself off. “Most of it.”

She turned back to look at herself in the mirror once more, lifting her chin and tilting her head to check out different angles, finding the facets of a face that she probably hadn’t been able to see in a long time.

#### ■


End file.
